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Oilers shock the Monkeys

Rich Lohman

TULSA, OK—As wins go, you can’t argue with the way the Tulsa Oilers won their overtime game last night against Mississippi last night. The Oilers hoped to make it two in a row as they welcomed the Amarillo Gorillas into the friendly confines of the amazing Bok center Saturday night.

The Oilers came into the game at 23-20-3 with 49 points and solidly in possession of the 5th and final playoff spot in the CHL North conference while Amarillo sits at 17-24-7 and 6th in the CHL south. In their previous meetings, both here and in Amarillo the teams have traded wins; in both cases the home team took the victory. The Oilers and Gorillas will meet one more time in Amarillo before the season ends.

The Gorillas opened the scoring tonight on a blast by Jake Obermeyer the got past Oilers goalie Trevor Cann assisted by Jason Chafe and Andy Brennan at 13:56 on the first period. That was answered by the 22nd goal this season by team leader TJ Caig at 14:33 assisted by Aaron Davis and Dan Riedel. The period featured a lot of back-and-forth action with both teams getting several breakout opportunities and odd-man rushes.

The 2nd period was owned by Tulsa as the Oilers scored 4 goals, answered only once by Amarillo. The lone Gorilla goal came from David Nimmo assisted by Jake Obermeyer and Anthony Battaglia, and that was after a blast on the power play by Troy Riddle found the back of the net behind Amarillo goalie Thomas Lohlander assisted by Tyler Butler and Travis Banga. Butler would get a goal of his own as did a second by Troy Riddle and another by TJ Caig and the second period would end with Tulsa solidly in command 5-2.

The Gorillas would close to within 2 goals on a tip in by David Nimmo at 13:14; but an empty net goal by Derek Eastman with barely a tenth of second on the clock sealed the Oilers 6-3.

The regulation win takes the Oilers past the Riverkings and into 4th place as the Missouri Mavericks handed them a 6-1 drubbing in Independence. The next game for Tulsa will be this Tuesday night against those very same Mavericks at 7:05pm in the BOK Center.

Tickets for that game and the Oilers remaining home games cane be purchased at the BOK Center box office, tulsaoilers.com and all Reasors locations. Catch all the exciting play-by-play action provided by Steve McCall at edgetulsa.com as well.